![]() was a celebrity of enormous stature, and somebody who had not shown the chops to play the part. I thought was not going to frighten Daniel Day-Lewis. My first choice was either Robert Hooks or Bernie Casey, so my reaction was less than enthusiastic. Hyams said, "I thought there were worthy African American actors who had paid their dues as actors, who had shown their talent. It’s just the kind of movie “they don’t make anymore,” apart from when they do.During his interview in the 2016 ESPN documentary O.J.: Made in America, Capricorn One director Peter Hyams admitted that the studio had given him a mandate to cast O.J. Scored in a jazzy, snazzy style by four credited composers and shot in sunny widescreen by Yaron Levy in palpably lived-in locations, All Square has the air of an unashamedly old-fashioned picture which will, sleeper-style, accumulate a devoted band of fans and admirers as the years go by. ![]() Casting director Meredith Tucker has assembled a craggy gallery of skilled character players, including the seasoned likes of Harris Yulin (as Zibs’ clapped-out pops) and Isiah Whitlock Jr. ![]() His creations are given three-dimensional life by a flavorsome ensemble cast - with House of Cards scene-stealer Kelly and the appealing Sheps at the center. Handled with unobtrusive professionalism in all departments, the film benefits greatly from Brady’s novelistic attention to character and milieu. It’s a robust testament to their achievement that All Square doesn’t feel significantly diminished in comparison to that fondly remembered semi-classic and stands on its own as a small-scale enterprise which makes some telling points about much bigger issues relating to American society, sports and community ties. Avoiding hazardous traps of life-lessons corniness in the development of the quasi-paternal friendship between Zibs and Brian - whose name is, for reasons best known to the scriptwriter, barely mentioned until the finale - Hyams and Brady instead construct an unsentimental vision of suburban sports-dominated lives very much in the tradition of Michael Ritchie’s The Bad News Bears (1976). Events will, however, forcibly make him realize that his relationship to his gamblers is more parasitical than benign, and that he himself may not be the nice, easy-going mensch he (and initially we) believes himself to be.Ĭrucial to this process is his unlikely friendship with Brian (Jesse Ray Sheps), the junior high schooler son of his old flame Debbie ( Pamela Adlon), who has somewhat optimistic major league ambitions of his own. Now a fortyish dude some way past his physical prime, the never-married Zibs sees himself as performing a kind of community service for his customers. ![]() Zibs is willing to take bets (on credit) on just about any activity - an entrepreneurial flexibility that ultimately lands him in big trouble - but feels a particular affinity for baseball, the sport in which he himself once excelled. Relying heavily on self-deprecating first-person narration, these take us into the financially tenuous world of illegal bookie John “Zibs” Zbikowski (Kelly), whose clients (“a book full of degenerate gamblers”) mainly comprise his friends and neighbors in the real-life middle-class Baltimore suburb of Dundalk. And the latter stages move towards some surprisingly dark territory, given the genial bounciness of the early stretches. But in the intervening six years, Hyams has worked exclusively in television ( Z Nation, The Originals, Chicago P.D.).Īll Square confirms that he’s considerably more than just an “action guy,” although it’s telling that he pulls off a small handful of violent interludes with energetic aplomb. That double whammy seemed set to launch the director towards the Hollywood big leagues - following in the footsteps of his father Peter ( Capricorn One, Outland, Running Scared). The name of Hyams is already very well known to certain sections of the sci-fi/action/fanboy community for his exhilarating revival of a moribund third-tier franchise with Universal Soldier: Regeneration (2009) and Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning (2012).
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